


it hangs like flax upon a distaff

by Kt_fairy



Series: let the river rush in [12]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Anxiety, Do not post to another site, Established Relationship, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Period Typical Attitudes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sexual Dysfunction, rated M for attempted oral sex, tfw you get cock blocked by the crimean war
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 01:34:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24306760
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kt_fairy/pseuds/Kt_fairy
Summary: “Considering how often such things happen,” Francis said quietly, “I think we men might be allowed to feel less embarrassed when it does.”
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Series: let the river rush in [12]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1458220
Comments: 25
Kudos: 63





	it hangs like flax upon a distaff

**Author's Note:**

> That's right folks, it's another fic off me where people sit about in a room and talk shit out. Imagine that! 
> 
> Thank you to MsKingBean for sending me sad emoji's when I dumped the first attempt at this, and for pointing out all what was missing. I'd be unmanned without you!
> 
> And yes, the title is a Shakespearean dick joke.

**-1854**

The sunset came slowly in this land. The vast, pale sky had been turned a violent shade of pink by the moody sun as it slowly slipped down towards the tops of the verdant mountains, that curled around the city like a cupped hand.

Francis patted his pocket for his telescope out of habit, muttering to himself when he remembered that he had left it aboard his ship. He turned his gaze away from the horizon and down to look over Varna, a place with as great an age and as much faded elegance as anywhere he had seen in Italy.

The old city had become the headquarters for the Allied armies in this spat with the Russian Empire, and was already crowded with gold braided generals and their staff, along with the more intrepid of their wives. Tonight those sailors who had been allowed to come ashore one last time before the fleet joined the momentum of the war towards the Crimean peninsula (with it’s Russian dockyards that Francis was currently in command of blockading), and the cramped, sultry streets spread out below the high window were thronging with life.

The Royal Navy had taken over a sprawling merchant’s inn near the port to billet its officers in, and Francis lent his elbows on the sun-warmed sill to watch the continuous stream of haggard midshipman coming up and down the hill bringing messages. Music was playing somewhere nearby, the tune of it unusual to Francis' ear, as was the language women were calling down from their own windows, but for all its foreign aspect, the merry din of churning noise was as familiar as any harbour in the world.

Out of habit Francis glanced at his old, battered pocket watch (the one James gifted him had been left in the safety of London) to check the time of the sunset. Then he reached out to pull the painted shutters closed over the window.

The narrow room did not become dingy and dark once the day had been shut out. The walls were whitewashed between the upright wooden beams, and the bright, geometric carpets on the floor cheered its whole aspect. Shadows from the candles still gathered in the corners, and flickered around James who was leaning close to the lantern set in the wall so he could read the latest letter Ross had sent to Francis.

Francis moved back over to the low, rectangular table that was still covered in the remains of their supper of roasted fish and grilled local bread, hooking his foot around a chair to turn it to face James, before sitting. 

The last time they had seen one another was two months ago now, when Admiral Lyons had called all his senior captains to the flagship to brief them before the fleet moved through the Dardanelles and into the Black Sea. James had turned forty since then (a number Francis did not like to think about) and a stand off over Ottoman territory had become a war between great European powers - a struggle that had not occurred since Francis was a boy and Napoleon was looking to subjugate the whole of Europe. Most men here would not remember that war, or, like Francis, who had only been at the edges of it as a boy, were now too old to do anything but issue orders. 

Everything had a strange momentum now, men and supplies moving faster than Francis had thought the Navy capable of. Francis was in the business of exploration however, and the Admiralty only ever halfheartedly engaged in that while waiting for a war to come around. 

He had never been one for it, the glory of warfare. Bravery was always commendable, but memorialising it in the suffering and death of men seemed like poor recompense for the sacrifice of life. Francis and the ships under his command would mostly likely be out of the way of the violence, yet the prospect of it all sometimes felt like the towering waves of the southern ocean, blotting out all trace of the horizon as they rose up and up ready to smash down upon your decks with the force of a broadside.

Francis had endured that before, both the sensation and the reality of it, and had lived through far worse. As had James, who had already been through one war, and the ship he commanded now - the fast, steam-powered, paddle frigate _HMS Valorous_ \- would be in the midst of any action that came, no doubt blowing things to bits with his usual skill and daring.

His presence this evening was as familiar and easy as always, despite the weight all serving captains carried on their shoulders. It eased something in Francis to see him do something as ordinary as peer at a letter about the goings on of Oxfordshire because he was too stubborn to use his spectacles, leaning against the wall as nonchalantly as if it were any ordinary night at home, rather than on the eve of war.

He had pushed his hair back from the frown on his face in a haphazard, distracted way. The grey at his forehead touched with gold by the same lamplight that glinted off the buttons on his summer weight waistcoat, that smoothed over the long planes of his body in a way more suited to a London drawing room than a quarterdeck.

James blinked suddenly, as if dropping out of an involved thought, then turned the paper over to read the back. He flicked a glance over to Francis, and he raised an eyebrow when he caught eyes on him, a knowing glint in his dark gaze as he cocked his head.

“You are watching me, sir," James stated, folding the letter neatly as he pushed off the wall.

“You are the most diverting thing in this room," Francis said, watching James move closer to him. 

“That is --”

“For the only other thing to look at is the carpet, which after a while stops being so interesting.”

James snorted at the inelegant wit as he came to stand before Francis, the thoughtful look on his face turning into a warm smile that only just touched his eyes. 

“I should hope I am more interesting than a rug,” James murmured as he slipped his leg between Francis’ own. “May I?”

“You already have.”

“Well then, if you have no objections,” James said, dropping the letter onto the table. He deftly knocked Francis’ knees apart as he stepped smoothly between them, his long fingers pushing into Francis' hair, James stroking it into a state of disorder as he pushed his head back. Francis lay a steadying hand on James’ waist as his hair was smoothed back into a semblance of neatness, before James slipped his fingertips down over the shell of Francis' ear to grasp the back of his neck as he kissed him. 

The chair creaked in protest as James bore his weight forward, nudging his thigh against Francis' groin. The pressure had him gasping into James’ smiling mouth; a familiar thrill going through Francis at the way James’ long, powerful body curled over him, all but pinning him into his seat. He grasped James’ waist when fingertips stroked lightly over his Adam’s apple on the way to slip back into his hair, nails digging gently into Francis’ scalp. 

The delightful pressure had Francis flushing, taken by a sudden want to put his mouth on James that had him stirring in his trousers. He smoothed his hands down James’ shapely legs and then up the backs of his thighs, trailing his fingers over James' hip to press against his groin.

That James had not quite risen to meet him was not a concern - he always did move faster than his body. Francis rubbed his palm over the almost firm shape of his prick as their kisses and hands wandered; getting caught up in the feel and the warmth of James, of the scent of his skin and the solidness of his presence, so that Francis did not notice the lack of effect on James until he made a noise of frustration and pulled away.

Francis let his hands fall from James, thinking that it ought to be erotic to see him leaning over Francis still, bracing himself on the back of the chair as he shoved his hand into his trousers to frig himself. But he only felt a swell of sympathy.

“James…”

“ _Bugger it_ ,” he hissed, ripping his hand from his trousers as he straightened, face as bright and unattractive a shade of red as Francis had ever seen.

“It is it no --”

“I only need a moment I am sure,” James said quickly, pushing his hair from his face.

“I believe you.”

James glanced at him, and then, just as Francis hoped he would not, down to where he was still noticeably affected.

Francis made to close his legs out of a sense of shame he had not felt for years, but James was stood in the way. “I can -- " James began, trying to appear neither agitated nor embarrassed, "it is only fair, after all.”

He knelt in one easy movement, running his hands up the inside of Francis’ thigh. He shifted closer on his knees when he reached the buttons of Francis’ trousers, his fingers fumbling to get them open as he ducked his head to press his mouth to the shape of Francis’ prick.

He was hardly the most red bloodied of sailors, yet this act had a draw on men that Francis was not immune to. It took him until he felt James' hot, damp breath through the wool of his trousers to react, and he caught James’ hand as he gently pushed him away with a hand on his shoulder.

"I do not wish to, James. Not when you are upset.” He said the last word with a cringe, knowing it was the wrong thing to say even before James got a thunderous look on his face.

" _Upset_!" James snapped, reeling back and up to his feet. "You could not simply ignore this, and allow me to ignore it as well -- " he stomped away, grabbing his coat and turning as if he meant to storm out.

Before Francis could rise to stop him, James flung his coat down on the bed and put his face in his hands, the room falling silent while the muffled noise of the city, and from the rest of the inn, swirled around them.

Francis tapped his foot once on the worn smooth floorboards, thinking of what he might say to soothe the wounds that male pride always took so easily, and felt so deeply. “James…”

“I am too mortified to listen to platitudes, Francis,” James muttered, dropping his hands to his sides.

Francis watched him a moment - the tightness in his posture and the way his head was bowed - and crossed the room to sit on the bed so he was closer to James but not crowding him, rearranging the lumpy pillows before leaning back against the rickety old headboard. 

“Considering how often such things happen,” Francis said quietly, “I think we men might be allowed to feel less embarrassed when it does.”

James huffed, shooting Francis a withering look, and before he could speak Francis said, "would you not say the same thing to me?"

James huffed again, but his expression lost some of its tightness as he struggled with the mortification Francis knew all too well. 

Francis had turned to whiskey to ease the tremors that had come on after he and Ross had spent that second, terrible winter in the Antarctic, with disaster stalking them at every turn. He continued to drink to quiet his increasingly unquiet mind, and eventually not even the most delightful dreams of Hobart had been able to rouse him.

The Passage had sobered him up in more ways than one, and left both James and he with nothing but a desperate, impotent desire for closeness to another terrified soul scrambling to survive.

“And yet I am the one who has to listen to the platitudes - listening to wisdom is not as easy as spouting it,” James muttered. “I am no young buck, if indeed I ever was one, but it…” he trailed off, pivoting on one foot so he could drop onto the end of the bed. “It is embarrassing. No matter how many times you plan to tell me it does not matter that I am become _ineffective_.”

“It does not matter, James. My idea for the evening was to spend time with _you_ , not pleasure for the sake of it.”

“Your prick does not think so,” James muttered petulantly, raking his hand through his hair as he turned to give Francis a pensive look.

Francis ignored that, sitting forward enough to touch his fingers to James’ forearm, feeling the heat of the summer's day through his thin linen sleeve. “Our wants are often mutual, and the times they are not, you do not force the matter,” he ducked his head to catch James’ eye. “And I would be a very poor man if I did not show you the same decency you show me.”

James nodded reluctantly. “We have only this evening together for who knows how long, and I --,” James checked behind himself before flopping out on the bed with a sigh. “I had hoped all this war business would not become more than some aggressive rattling of sabres by neighbouring empires, and now it seems we are on the way to box it out on some godforsaken peninsular. Although how much we shall see of it all I do not know,” there was a dull thud as James dropped his hand onto the blankets. “Which is only one of the thirty things that have been going through my mind for days, now I know what lies ahead.”

Francis cocked his head to try and see the expression on his face. “The Black Sea is no clogged Chinese river estuary, James.”

“I know it is the very worst thing a captain can admit to, but I do worry about it all,” he spoke in little more than a whisper, flinging out a hand to grasp the material of Francis’ trouser leg. “I trust it shall all be well, yet I have had dreams. The decks of _Valorous_ take on the stink of typhoid that lingered on the _Cornwallis_ , and the shadows become the blood of the wounded brought back to her. They have given me a sense of trepidation that I know is wise, yet I dwell on it...” he fell silent, then shook his head. "It's all this sitting around, ferrying soldiers about. I shall become less peevish at sea, like we all do."

Francis thought it was quite sensible to worry about going off to a war, he certainly had his own concerns, but then he was a man made of more anxieties than your usual daring, warship bred, officer. They were allowed to stumble under what they had survived in the Arctic, but that did not stretch to the war that gave James dreams that were not such source of agitation, nor did they seem to be as vivid, as those nightmares from the Arctic. 

“Why did you not say so, James?”

“I know what you are like, and I did not wish you to worry about it on top of everything else a captain must think of. Nor mar this evening,” he tipped his head back to look at Francis. “And yet I am laying here impotent because of them. And verging on melodrama.”

"I do not think you are being melodramatic," he said, bumping his leg against James’ arm. "However, I think I should be more worried if you were not flounced out in a huff."

James shot him a look, a begrudging smile from pulling at the corners of his mouth. "Your ship has been moored near to Dundy's for too long."

"We agreed that you might say such a thing," Francis teased, James losing a battle against a smile when he gave his leg a shove.

"Intolerable."

"Yet you are smiling."

“Yes. For a bad tempered old man, you always manage it," James agreed, smoothing his hand up Francis' calf to tuck behind his knee. “Do not think you are not a distraction and a comfort in the midst of this rush to violence. What weighs on me is no… I had thought that _intimacy_ might distract me further for a little while, but…”

“Do not dwell on that, James.” Francis took James’ hand, pressing a kiss to the side of his thumb before holding it in his lap. “Do not weigh yourself down before this all starts in earnest. I know how little good it does a man.”

James squeezed his hand, falling silent a moment, before letting go as he pushed himself upright with a grunt. There were twin thuds as James toed off his shoes, then he stood to move around to the other side of the bed, hesitating with his knee on the mattress, left hand clenching and unclenching at his side.

"Do you recall that rather uninspiring fumble we had on _Erebus_?"

"I do, yes," Francis agreed, surprised that James had brought that up now. 

It had been more a frantic outpouring of the very human need for closeness than anything else. Of relief at finally finding a way to share their very great responsibility, and the great loneliness that came with it. It had been a perfunctory, desperate approximation of the warmth and care that was between them now, the whole attempt overshadowed by the effects of scurvy as much as the ice groaning against _Erebus’_ hull.

“I have never been a devoted _follower of Aphrodite',_ shall I say. Not since I achieved anything, so it was no real worry to me when scurvy or the tins or… or all our mounting concerns had my _vigour_ dwindle to nothing.” James explained as he sat angled towards Francis, long legs crossed before him. “I have escaped lightly from many things in my life, the Passage is no exception; I have nightmares and cannot stand the cold, I am missing teeth, a swathe of grey is in my hair, my eyesight fails - it could be much worse, I know I am lucky,” James mused. “Far too lucky. And I know that the damage already done will catch up with me one day."

All that was true, of course, and not just for James. They had lived by fortune's whim alone, and she was the only thing more fickle than the sea.

"I became agitated not only for my vanity," James spoke frankly, "although reading of how Lady Ross is with child _again_ did not help --”

“Christ James, don’t bring that up now.”

“--but for how it may speak to my future health, do you see?”

"I do," Francis nodded, a part of him wishing they were back to talking about impending war. “What we are, and what we share, was an impossibility in more ways than one to a man who had been worn down by his profession, and who had become as disagreeable to himself as he was to others. And who was already well into the age where men begin to wilt, without the help of whiskey.”

“You are one of the hardiest souls I know, Francis Crozier. True heart of oak, eh?” James said lightly, patting him on the chest. “Besides, I would have loved you regardless of ‘wilting’, you know that.”

“I did not think it would be otherwise, I hardly think my skill as a lover is what attracts you.”

“I am hardly qualified to judge one way or another” James shrugged, unfolding his legs so he could lean an elbow on the pillows beside Francis, lounging with perfect languidness for a man just turned forty. “Nevertheless, we are content with one another, are we not? That is what matters?”

“I think so. We have survived worse than this.”

“I should say,” James scoffed, hooking his ankle over Francis’ leg as the jumbled sounds of revelling in the streets grew in volume. “I think we make a passable go at being old.”

“Forty is hardly old age, James.”

James hummed quietly. “You will forgive a fellow who finds himself recently unmanned for not quite agreeing with that.”

Francis looked down at James, whose mouth was worried into that familiar pensive line. “Desire hardly comes to me on its own anymore,” Francis admitted quietly, “and that is something time and age will not allow to improve, I think. If left to my own devices I might forget all about it --”

“If you mean to say I keep you young,” James huffed, “then I shall be very perturbed.”

“ _I might forget all about it_ ,” Francis repeated,” and resolve myself to what I know ageing does to a man, how easily it steals vitality away even of those who have lived more peaceful, healthy lives than I have. You do not keep me young, I am under no illusion that I am not as young as you."

James craned his head back to look at Francis, the consideration in his gaze made all the more apparent by the way candlelight always caught his eyes.

“Being a captain is an old, experienced man's game, but it would be far easier if we were all much younger.” James sighed, then pushed himself up so he was straddling Francis’ leg, sitting back on his heels with his hair and shirt in a disarray that he would never allow aboard ship. “I am the one who brought us into this dispirited conversation, which I know it is better to have than to let fester. And yet if one goes into any danger on such a note, it will not serve one well. As we well know!"

"We do," Francis agreed as a great cheer went up somewhere in the city. "Especially as everyone else in Varna seems to be making sure they are having a good time."

“As all Jack Tars should,” James declared. “For they shall have the devil to pay from the boatswains tomorrow.”

“And on _Valorous?_ ”

“Musketry drill from the marines of course, first thing,” James grinned when Francis laughed. “For I shall be a foul tempered, tyrant of a captain to compensate for my failing tonight.”

“It is not a failing,” Francis murmured, shifting his leg so James' weight was not bearing down on it so. “Besides, you do not have it in you to be a tyrant.”

“I suppose not.” James lent forward, bracing himself with hands pressed to the wall either side of Francis’ head, to give him a soft kiss. He made to pull away, then swayed back in, Francis curling his hands over James’ sides as he moved to sit properly in his lap. 

“You will insist on having your way,” Francis sighed with no real irritation, tipping his head so he could catch the faint scent of James’ hair.

“We need do no more than this, but know that I am still _most_ willing, and no longer _upset_. Or we may find I have my thoughts in order,” James said as he settled closer, arms slipped around Francis as he declared with a flourish - “only the moment matters!”

Even after years in the company of the English and the Scots, Francis had not lost his Irish sentimentality - a thing that had only increased with age - and he felt a swell of it now, even as he called James, “a proper philosopher, when it suits you,” before kissing him.


End file.
